A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

As I create these colored cutouts, it seems to me that I advance joyfully to meet whatever awaits. I do not believe I have ever experienced such peace and harmony as in making these cutout papers.

I do not literally paint the table, but the emotion it produces on me...

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

In modern art, it is undoubtedly to Cezanne that I owe the most.

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.

Seek the strongest Color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

The artist has but one idea. He is born with it and spends a lifetime developing it and making it breathe. I basically work without theory. I am aware only of the forces I use, and I move along the course of the picture's creation, pushed by an idea that I come to know only gradually as it develops.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

We must see all life as if we were children.

Without passion there is no art.

The artist only sees old truths in a new light,because there are no new truths.

What I dream of is an art of balance,of purity and serenity.

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter's disposal for the expression of his feelings.

There is discontinuity between my former paintings and my cut-outs,only with more absloluteness and more abstraction.

I had this dance in me for a long time,and I had to put it into La joie de vivre. It was like a rhythm within me that carried me along.

A pair of scissors is a ... wonderful instrument ... an occupation I can lose myself in ... my pleasure in cutting things out grows ever greater. Why didn't I think of it before.